


Running Into You

by ClockworkCrow (icemink)



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Canon Compliant, Finn has flashbacks, Finn is a witness in Kylo Ren's trial, M/M, casualties in war, personal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-28
Updated: 2019-09-28
Packaged: 2020-10-30 00:04:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20805206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icemink/pseuds/ClockworkCrow
Summary: Finn is called on to testify against Kylo Ren. When  he is reminded of the Stormtrooper he watched die on Jakku, he realizes just how short life is.





	Running Into You

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [If I Had My Way](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20439578) by [ClockworkCrow (icemink)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/icemink/pseuds/ClockworkCrow). 

> I wrote this while working on If I Had My Way because as I was writing Finn's testimony a lot of old deep memories of my own came up. I wrote this to try and deal with those feelings and express some of them.
> 
> The details are explained in the notes at the end, but they are not happy or uplifting. So you may want to skip the notes at the end if you just want a happy little fic.

Finn sat perfectly still despite his nervousness. Deep down, he was still a Stormtrooper, a lifetime of training to stand at perfect attention didn't vanish overnight. It didn't disappear after a few months of freedom from the First Order either.

And the past few hours, recounting his life with the First Order had brought it all back.

Kiandra Kappa, the attorney prosecuting Kylo Ren, had spent a lot of time with Finn, going over his testimony and preparing him for the trial, but he didn't feel prepared. He was a soldier, he wasn't a public speaker. He was supposed to disappear into the ranks of other Stormtroopers, not stand out like this.

He waited as Jaren Hennis, the defense attorney slowly stood up, adjusting his robes.

"I'd just like to start by saying what a remarkable young man you are. I can't begin to imagine what it must have taken to make the choice to leave the first order as you did."

Finn was surprised by the attorney's friendliness. This was the person defending Kylo Ren after all. 

"You've told us a lot about the First Order hierarchy," Hennis continued, referring to the Kappa's earlier questions about where Kylo Ren fit into the power structure of the First Order. "But I'm a little curious about procedure. Before your mission to Jakku were you given any sort of briefing?"

"Of course," Finn said.

"And in that mission briefing, how was Jakku described?"

"A desert planet with harsh but habitable terrain. Sparsely populated, previously held by the Imperial Remnant, but now nominally controlled by the Hutt Cartell."

Finn didn't think twice as the words came out of his mouth. Memorizing briefings were part of Stormtrooper training. He supposed if there had been more missions (and no reconditioning in between) they would have blurred together. But he had been on precisely one mission, and the memory of that night would not leave him soon.

"The Hutts?" Hennis asked. "So not a New Republic world?"

"Well the Empire claimed it, but I think. . ." Finn shrugged. "Sorry I don't know much about how the New Republic was formed. My understanding was after the Battle of Jakku the Hutts took over."

Finn was afraid Hennis would press him on the matter. The entirety of his education had been handled by the First Order and was designed to make him believe that they were right and the New Republic wrong. He was suddenly afraid that he was repeating First Order propaganda, and not facts.

Hennis went over to the large screen that had been set up for the presentation of evidence. At the top Finn could read the words' Charter of The New Republic' and under it a list of planets.

"Let the record show that Jakku was not included in the list of planets of the New Republic charter." They turned back to Finn. "And what was your mission on Jakku?"

"To find the Resistance Fighter Poe Dameron and to retrieve a map he was believed to have."

"And how did Commander Dameron get to Jakku?"

Finn was confused by the question. "His X-Wing?"

"Are you sure about that?" Hennis clarified.

"Yeah. Yes." Finn added firmly. "I remember some of the other Stormtroopers there being ordered to destroy his ship."

Also, Poe had later lamented the ship's destruction. 

"An X-Wing is a military fighter, isn't it?"

"Yeah?" Finn's nervousness was growing. This felt like some of the 'conversations' that were sometimes had when a First Order officer was trying to determine if a Stormtrooper needed reconditioning or not. It felt like a trap.

"Now, can you tell me when the first shot was fired at Tuanul?" Hennis asked.

"As soon as we hit the ground I think," Finn said. 

"You think?"

"No, I'm sure." He corrected himself as the memory of that night returned. 

He could remember vividly the fear, the anxiety while he waited for the trooper transport to land. Being packed in shoulder to shoulder with his fellow Stormtroopers and hearing blaster fire outside the vessels. Fear that they would be shot down before they landed.

"We were under fire," Finn asserted. "So protocol would be to start shooting back right away."

"Under fire? You mean that the residents of Tuanul started firing on the First Order before you landed?"

He understood the implication all too well. Yes, they had been under fire before they had landed. The First Order had not been the first to fire that night.

"Well, I. . ? I couldn't see, not inside the transport, but I could hear blaster fire before we landed, and we didn't have a TIE fighter escort." Deep down, he knew he had to tell the truth. "Yes, they fired on us first." 

"So you, your fellow Stomrtroppers, and Kylo Ren as part of the military of the First Order were sent to Jakku as part of a military operation to apprehend an enemy soldier believed to have important information for the war effort. Before you could land and ask for him to be handed over, you were attacked by the local populace. And this all transpired on a Neutral planet that is neither part of the First Order or the New Republic. Is that correct?"

"I suppose" Finn was forced to agree.

"Is some part of what I said inaccurate?" Hennis asked.

It was too accurate, at least if you could boil a battle down to facts. If you pulled out the smell of smoke and the screams of fear and pain. If you forgot about the burning houses and the bodies on the ground. If you could forget the look in the eyes of the men, women, and children who were lined up for the firing squad. If you could forget the sound of dozens of bodies hitting the ground all at once.

"No, no its accurate, its just. . . They surrendered" Finn said. He could see the villagers in front of him. He hadn't fired, but he had stood there, blaster raised, and watched them die. "We didn't need to kill them."

"Right away? Did they surrender before there were any First Order casualties?"

He could see his fellow Stormtrooper hit the ground. See their bloody hand reach up for Finn's face, looking for a human connection in their last moment of life. Finn hadn't known them. He didn't know if it was a man or woman in that armor. They didn't have a name, he didn't even know their number.

But they were him. They wore the same armor, had eaten the same food, had walked the same passageways. They would have been woken each morning when the same call came over the loudspeakers, "Reveille! Reveille! Reveille! All Hands Heave Out and Trice Up!" And gone to sleep each night when they heard its opposite, "Taps, taps, lights out! All hands turn into your bunks! Maintain silence about the decks!"

Watching that Stormtrooper die, had been like watching himself die.

"There were casualties," he said quietly.

It hurt. 

It hurt to think he could have been that Stormtrooper, that he could have been the one to die that day. It hurt worse to know that he was the only one who cared. And it was terrifying to think that he might have been him who died that die, without ever having a friend. Without ever having been kissed.

Because someone who had lead the same life he had lead, had died that day. Someone who might as well have been him.

People said that he had been brave that day, to walk away from the First Order, the truth was he'd been afraid; he'd run away.

The questioning continued, and Finn managed to answer each question, but the fear wouldn't leave him.

He wasn't a faceless, nameless Stormtrooper anymore, but he was still a soldier, he was still fighting a war. He could still die, and although he had been kissed, he'd never kissed the person he wanted to, or even admitted how he felt.

Finally he was released from the witness stand and able to leave the courtroom. He was practically running once he was free of the courtroom. But then he'd been running for a while.

"Uh, Commander Dameron, can I speak to you for a moment?" Finn asked as he burst into the command center.

Poe looked startled, in part by Finn's sudden entrance and in part because there was no reason that Finn should have to speak to him urgently. But he nodded and led Finn to his office.

"If this is about the trial, you know-"

Finn cut him off by grabbing the front of Poe's flight suit and roughly pulling the other man into a kiss. 

It wasn't elegant, it wasn't gentle, as their teeth clashed against each other. But something was exciting about the way Poe's stubble felt against Finn's face, and for one incredible moment, Finn wasn't afraid.

But then it was over, and Finn was faced with the fact that he'd just marched into the command center demanded the time of de facto head of the Resistance, and had no idea if Poe thought of him as anything more than a friend, or would even consider the idea of kissing another man.

Suddenly Finn was rooted to the ground unable to say anything as he watched Poe blink away his surprise.

For a moment neither of them said anything. Then Poe smiled.

"Well it's about time," Poe said, pushing Finn back against the wall before kissing him back. 

Poe, it turned out was an excellent kisser. When Poe finally let Finn breathe again, all Finn could think to do was say, "About time for what?"

Poe laughed. "That you figured out I've been flirting with you for months. Who finally clued you in?"

"Uh no one, I just, I didn't want to die without ever having kissed you."

"Wow," Poe said, pulling back slightly. "Way to be confident in my leadership."

"I didn't-"

"Guess you'll have to make it up to me over dinner," Poe said. 

"Dinner?" Finn asked.

"Well this is a military base, so there's not really a restaurant we can go to. But I might be convinced to pull rank just this once so we can have a quiet dinner in my quarters? What do you say?"

This was all going way better than Finn had expected, it was kind of frighting. But then every time in Finn's life he'd run, he'd managed to run into Poe Dameron. And it hadn't ended badly yet.

"Sure," was all Finn could think to say.

"Then it's a date," Poe said, clearly looking for agreement.

"Yeah," Finn said nervously. "It's a date."

**Author's Note:**

> At 08:18 UTC on October 12, 2000, in a port in Yemen, a small boat loaded with explosives was rammed into the USS Cole an Arleigh-Burke class Destroyer. I was less than 100 miles away as the crow flies on another Arleigh-Burke class Destroyer that was still in the Persian Gulf. A few minutes later the call would come over the radio that there had been an attack on Cole.
> 
> I didn't know any of the 17 sailors who were killed, or 39 who were injured. But I spent the next several months of my life wearing the same clothes as them, walking the same hallways, going through the same routine.
> 
> 11 months later, 9/11 would happen, I was still serving in the US military, and it certainly changed the way my life played out. But the attack on the Cole always felt more personal. Later we would learn that the original target of the attack was the USS The Sullivans, a ship I had been stationed on and left just a few weeks before the planned attack would have occurred.
> 
> They always say writers should write what they know. As a fan-fiction writer who likes fantasy and sci-fi, I've never done that. But there is a piece of me embedded in this little story that came out when I was thinking about Finn and that Stormtrooper who marks his helmet with a bloody hand print. The theory that you should write what you know implies that it should be the best thing I've ever written. It feels like the most inadequate.
> 
> Part of me wants to dedicate this story to the men and women of the Cole, http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/usscole-main.htm but that feels wrong because in a few weeks time it will have been 19 years since they died. I was 21 at the time, and the men and women who died were about my age.
> 
> It was a lifetime ago. 
> 
> But now that I'm remembering it, it feels like yesterday, even though I no longer march when I walk, I no longer instinctively go to take off my hat when I go indoors. Most of the military is long drained out of me, but this vibrant memory remains.
> 
> And that is the only tribute I really have to them. Somewhere, someone they never met, still remembers them.
> 
> If you read through this note I have one thing to ask. Please don't thank me for my service. Those words mean a lot to a lot of veterans, but I've never been comfortable with them especially now that babies who were born when I enlisted, are now old enough to fight the war that started under my watch.


End file.
